


I've got the key to my castle in the air

by Bouzingo



Series: Even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Books, Clones, Gen, Genderfluid Character, Hydra, Tumblr: ImagineBuckyBarnes, little women - Freeform, medication mention, not civil war compliant, toxic masculinity, two things that go hand in hand really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-06 20:46:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6769294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bouzingo/pseuds/Bouzingo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>... but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen.' -Louisa May Alcott</p>
<p>The story of Job, and his brothers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I've got the key to my castle in the air

Out of the five of them, they’ve got exactly two books to share. One of them is  _ Little Women _ , by a lady named Louisa May Alcott, and the other one is a magazine one of the scientists left by mistake. A science magazine,  _ Little Women _ , the forward to  _ Little Women _ by another lady named Winona Ryder. And then Jethro’s encyclopedic knowledge of another book called  _ The Bible _ , which was not written by ladies, and so it kind of sucks, in Job’s approximation.

“I think it would be a fine thing to be a lady, so I could write a book,” Job says. He used to go by Jo, until Marcus told him Jo was a girl’s name and Jethro added the ‘b.’

“It’s not just ladies who write books,” Marcus says, exasperated.

“Men write science magazine,” Job says with all the authority his 17-year-old self can muster. “And ladies like Louisa May Alcott and Winona Ryder write books.”

“What about the Bible?” Jethro says.

“You said God wrote that,” Job shrugs. “It doesn’t count.”

“Winona Ryder is a film actor,” Marcus says. “She doesn’t write.”

“Does so,” Job says, holding up Little Women. “She and Ms. Alcott are probably really good friends, the way she talks.”

“You haven’t been out there,” Marcus says. “That’s not how things are.”

“Whatever,” Job says. “Just ‘cause you go out sometimes doesn’t mean you known anything about books or writers.”

But Marcus knows about the original, talks about the way he fought bravely in the way (not the American Civil War, there was another one, after) and then became a hero when he started stopping wars before they began, with a single bullet, with a sharp twist of his metal hand.

Job is proud that the original is his progenitor. But he can’t believe they share the same chains of DNA. The original was so brave, and sometimes Job cries because Marcus is gone for too long, or becomes completely consumed with a terror of dying. And also, sometimes, the wants so bad to be called Jo and to be a lady novelist, though it’s not his DNA and the original would be so disappointed, to say nothing of Marcus; he already thinks Job is small and odd. Not that he means to be! It’s just because he hasn’t been outside.

But Marcus thinks he’s slow, and not tactically minded., because he thinks with his feelings and his gut. He jealously reads about Jo and her preserved limes. Even in a time of war, Jo has fruit and vegetables made in succulent preparations which make his stomach curl in empathy.

In the Bunker they all get an apple for their birthday. Job remembers on their tenth how he tried to take just one small bite of his each day to make the sensation of sweet food that crunched last a little longer. It rotted not even a week after, and he cried.

The others are still alarmed by how much he cries. A scientist gave him chalky pills he’s supposed to take with is calcium and vitamin supplements, but he gets quiet and sleepy when he does and so he forgets to a lot. Well, he doesn’t forget. Job doesn’t like lying, but he also doesn’t like being tired. It’s tiring enough without the help of tiny white pills.

Marcus goes out for mission, and doesn’t come back. The scientists say that he got shot. And Job cries for days, because Marcus called him all sorts of nasty things and thought he was slow and odd, but Job loved him. A scientist gives him a shot, and he sleeps for so long he isn’t sure if it’s even a day or a week when he wakes up.

Jethro is reading the science magazine when he wakes up, the article about cloning, which isn’t like Jethro because he thinks God did what science takes credit for.

“‘Fro?” Job says groggily.

“Oh, you’re awake,” Jethro says and flips a shiny magazine page. It’s really too quiet for just the two of them. “You know that this articles talks about clones like they’re not real?”

“Yeah,” Job says.

“Maybe we’re not real,” Jethro says hollowly. Job stares. He’s still shaking sleep-slowness from his head. “Maybe that’s why God doesn’t answer me.”

“Jethro, we’re  _ real _ ,” Job says. “How could we not be?”

“Marcus is gone, and there’s nothing of him,” Jethro explains.

“We could have been thinking him up. We could be thinking each other up.”

“But… you don’t know what I’m thinking,” Job reasons. “And I don’t know what you tink. Marcus died outside, that’s why he’s not here. If he died in here he’d still be in here.”

“No,” Jethro says. “You clot. If someone died in here they’d take the body away. They always do. Don’t you remember Ben?”

“No,” Job says.

“That just proves my point. You don’t remember because he’s not real.”

Job misses Marcus, because Jethro is nuts without him. The next day there are two none of them, same generation as Jethro. Their names are Alex and Ivan, and they speak different, and they don’t know about  _ Little Women _ , or  _ Popular Science _ . Instead they bring a book called  _ The Brothers Karamazov _ , which is written a triangle-square languages Job doesn’t understand.

“I teach you,” Ivan says, very seriously. He has a cloudy eye and white burn scars all over his hands. His hair is a little greyer than Jethro’s. “If you teach me little stick letters.”

_ The Brothers Karamazov  _ is written by a man, which bothers Job because there’s not a jot of science in the entire look. Maybe the ladies write the science in this language.

Ivan is a very patient teacher. He repeats everything when Job asks, and glares at Alex and Jethro when they look over with annoyance from their boardgame. Alex brought something called chess, which confuses Job to tears,but takes Jethro’s mind off their possible unreality.

Job has the harder task.  _ Little Women’s _ rules make barely any sense, in comparison to those of  _ The Brothers Karamazov _ . But he gets better at explaining why some things in Little Women are the way they are in English, or he gets better at guessing why.

Soon Ivan shares Job’s reverence for Jo and Winona, and Job has a whole new love for Leo Tolstoy, who has a better pantry than Louisa May. He like speaking in Russian, the heavy intent of each phrase, the capacity for tender description. He begins a project of putting _ Little Women _ in Russian.

The scientist is very impressed about Russian at Job’s next checkout, and promises him books maybe, for his birthday.

“Language acquisition is higher in this one than the others,” he says to another scientist, like Job’s not there. “It will be useful in the field.”

The field. Job would love to be out there. But Alex looks at him very seriously when he admits it.

“It is dangerous,” he says. “Not just for your body. For who you are. You would be a rarity in the world, Job.”

“Why?”

Alex’s good eyes clouds over, and he frowns.

“I hope you never see for yourself,” he says.

Job doesn’t think a world which made  _ Little Women _ could be all bad.

**Author's Note:**

> Based on an imaginebucky prompt that asked for clones, and its sequel! I also want to write about the Widow clones, and post-rescue Job, hence why this is a series and not a chronological story. Feel free to leave suggestions and comments below- that's what commenting is there for. Thanks to everyone who fell in love with Job the way I did.
> 
> Original Job posts:
> 
> http://imaginebucky.tumblr.com/post/141773028862/imagine-bucky-was-cloned-a-few-times-so-that
> 
> http://imaginebucky.tumblr.com/post/141951810336/for-the-clone-prompt-you-just-posted-do-you


End file.
